Thoughts need words, and words need power… -Sharon M. Draper

Okay, so now that you know what a Webinar is (if you haven’t before), I can tell you about the amazing thing that I did:

But first, lets start from the beginning…

So, one day, Mr. Geiman and Mr. Arena decided to write a grant to get Virtual Reality headsets including the phones to go with them. Fortunately, they were able to get 10 headsets. The sets included the goggles, the phones, an instructor’s tablet and a protective, heavy-duty VR case. Mr. Geiman and Mr. Arena share the VR with their outstanding students. They went on journeys through the Amazon, they relived scenes from WWII and did many more cool things using Google Expeditions.

After each Expedition, Mr. Geiman has his wonderful students write up a See Think Wonder Google Document about the Expedition and the text that they read before the Expedition. The document lets his students write about what they saw in the Expedition, what they were thinking about the Expedition and what they wonder about the Expedition. There is also a Text Connections part where the students connect the Expedition to the text they read about the Expedition. Here is one of my many See Think Wonders.

A little further in…

Mr. Arena and Mr. Geiman have already gone to several conferences and will be going to many more to present their students’ amazing work and talk about Virtual Reality. This is Mr. Geiman’s post about his and Mr. Arena’s travel to Washington D.C. for a conference.

Now about the awesome thing I did… Wait! Can you guess without looking? Here‘s a hint.

You’ve probably guessed by now, but if you haven’t, I’ll tell you. I attended Mr. Geiman and Mr. Arena’s Webinar for Unbounded Classroom! It was really cool!

This is all about the Webinar and when I signed up.

When Mr. Geiman announced to his Reading Class that he and Mr. Arena were doing a Webinar, I was feeling ecstatic. I really wanted to be part of it. I really wanted to hear them talk about and explain how outstanding their classrooms really are. The thing that made me even more excited was when Mr. Geiman said that a very important person from the Department of Education in Pennsylvania was going to be attending!

So, I walked over to Mr. Geiman the day the Webinar was one and asked him if I could register. (The invitation post on his blog about it said that sign-ups were due May 28th, but I really didn’t care) He said that it was sold out. 🙁 Mr. Geiman even showed me on his phone. That didn’t stop me from at least trying though.

I was thinking about that Webinar all day. Finally, when it was time to go home, I excitedly walked out to my bus and immediately got my phone out from my backpack. Our school day usually went until 3:30 p.m., and the Webinar started at 3:30 p.m.. Despite that, I still really wanted to try to register.

I used my phone to successfully get onto Mr. Geiman’s blog. On the post about the Webinar, I clicked the button that said “Register now.”Apparently, the website that it took me to was an app for my phone, so I quickly downloaded it. The app is called “BlueJeans.” (Yes, the words are smashed together like that)

The app asked for my email address, so I typed my Mom’s into it since I don’t actually have one. A confirmation email would be sent to her in 5-10 minutes. I texted her to tell her to get onto her email and look for a confirmation email about a Webinar in 5 minutes. Luckily, she got it. The email really came to no use though because all the information was already on my phone.

I was getting off the bus next, so I jammed my phone into the front of my lunchbox and dashed inside. I ran up to my room with my backpack still on and everything.

As soon as I was in my room, I was already connecting to the Webinar. I was 15 minutes late, but I really didn’t care. I was just happy I was “there.” I was then kindly greeted by Mr. Geiman with a friendly “Hi Summer!” I was so happy and excited!

There were 2 screens you could look at for the Webinar. One was showing Mr. Geiman and Mr. Arena’s faces. The other was showing the slideshow that they were presenting. One of Maggie‘s See Think Wonder document was being presented in the slideshow. It was all so awesome.

Throughout the Webinar, I answered a question that was in the comment section and asked a question. The comment was asking what the VR headsets costed. I answered in another comment that the headsets cost about 20 USD, but the phones costed a lot more. The question I asked was “Did you tell them about the other grant that you wanted to write?”

Mr. Geiman replied, “Which one? We have a few on the list. The 3D-printer?

“Yeah.”

“No. Well, we wanted to write another grant for a 3D-printer so that our students can create 3-Dimensional objects through coding.”

That question took us to 4:32 Eastern Time, 2 minutes over the time it was supposed to be over. As soon as it was over, I closed the tab on my phone and immediately ran downstairs to blog about my experience. 🙂

Want some more great posts to read? If you answered yes, then it would be worth your while to check out these links:

Sketch.io is website you use to create some supercalifragilisticexpialidocious sketches, or virtual drawings. My friend Mae introduced me to it. I believe it is a very fun and unique time-passer. Sketch.io has really cool tools and things you can use to make your amazing drawings.

The sketch above is just something I decided to just make for fun. I was experimenting with different things and tools you can use on the website.

Last week using Virtual Reality, our class visited Macchu Picchu, Peru. I thought it was beautiful. The ruins were amazing, enormous and ancient. Maya people inhabited Peruvian city. The mountain the old city of the Maya sat upon was dangerous to trek up. Below is my See, Think, Wonder Google Document about more of my opinions and thoughts about the Expedition.